Recent highlights of the Dwarf Fortress guys' blog.

Tarn Adams's goal for Dwarf Fortress is apparently to make such a complex simulation that if, many centuries from now, he finds unexpectedly that he has somehow completed it, he will at least never get bored with playing with it. (The New York Times article bears out my theory.) This appears to be working out pretty well for him.

"Demons that impersonate gods have been updated to use identities, finally, so they'll actually put on a little act for you when you go to talk to them. The one I was testing impersonated a death/lust god named Bekat the Adorable Skull. Before it took over the human civilization, it used to live in a cave, and I found a book it wrote about the cave in the castle tower. The demons all have horrible personalities, so it was a mean little book. Zach thought it was being foolish -- I don't suppose its god disguise is a very good one, if it's going to complain about its old living arrangements like that."

"There was a general whose wife was the leader of a civilization. In the year 8, she was kidnapped and turned into a bleak horror. Over the decades, the general became obsessed with his own mortality and sought out the necromancer's tower, becoming a lowly apprentice in return for eternal life. Years later, he wrote a 30 page essay about his horror wife called Victory By The Creature. He also took an apprentice of his own, a former queen of the dwarves, and wrote a touching and concise 282 page biography about her."

"My adventurer fought through around sixty zombies in the tower, killed the necromancer, learned the secrets of life and death, and then raised various limbs (not my own). Then I talked to one of them, and it told me that it was peasant. It was flattered but had no need of my services. I imagine its little fingers were shaped into the form of a mouth and they flapped back and forth while it spoke with a high-pitched voice. I guess there's still work to do."

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